Democrats' diverging shutdown approaches: From the Politics Desk

This is the online version of From the Politics Desk, a daily newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

Welcome to the first edition of February. Today, Sahil Kapur explores the differing approaches to the government funding bill from the top two Democrats in Congress. Plus, Adam Edelman and Ben Kamisar dive into how the 2020 election is hanging over this year’s gubernatorial campaign in Georgia.

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— Adam Wollner

Schumer and Jeffries take different tacks on government funding bill

Analysis by Sahil Kapur

The top two Democrats in Congress are taking different approaches to the latest government shutdown showdown.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., cut a deal with the White House to keep most agencies open while punting Department of Homeland Security funding for two weeks as Democrats press their demands for changes.

But House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., is cool to the funding package, which the Senate passed last Friday. He declined to say today whether he will vote for it, noting that there are “a variety of perspectives” among House Democrats.

“We’ll have a leadership meeting later on today where we’ll have a discussion about it. We had a caucus meeting yesterday. There was a diversity of perspectives about how to move forward on this particular bill,” Jeffries told reporters, adding that there will be a “full and robust discussion tomorrow morning at caucus.”

One day earlier, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told Kristen Welker on “Meet The Press” that Jeffries indicated to him that Democrats won’t help him pass the funding legislation. Johnson said he’s confident Republicans will have enough votes in the House to pass it, even as the party’s margin shrinks to 218-214 after a special election in a deep-blue Texas district over the weekend.

The hesitation from Jeffries comes as he faces a slew of members who feel passionately about refusing to fund DHS and ICE even on a stopgap basis in the wake of two fatal shootings in Minnesota.

Jeffries, 55, is also within striking distance of becoming speaker of the House next year, and has worked to present himself as a consensus-builder in the conference. Given the narrow midterm battlefield, he cannot afford defections to secure his prospects of the gavel.

Schumer, 75, is at a different point in his career. He has led Senate Democrats for nine years. It’s unclear whether he’ll seek to stay on, or run for another term, when his seat is up again in 2028. And unlike the House minority, which has little power to shape legislation, the Senate minority remains powerful due to the chamber’s 60-vote threshold to fund the government.

Schumer also faces pressure from members who don’t like to see government shutdowns, unlike House Democrats, who are often more willing to get in the ring and fight with President Donald Trump’s GOP.

But there’s one thing Schumer and Jeffries agree on: that Democrats will block a full-year DHS funding bill without reforms to rein in the agency.

“ICE and the DHS need to dramatically change,” Jeffries told reporters. “And absent that, then a full-year appropriations bill is in deep trouble.”

➡️ Related: Noem says body cameras going to all DHS field officers in Minneapolis, by Phil Helsel and Julia Ainsley

Trump’s 2020 election obsession is still shaping Georgia politics

By Adam Edelman and Ben Kamisar

Six years after President Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 election results, that campaign is still shaping Georgia’s next big vote.

The race to be Georgia’s next governor features a handful of Republican candidates who played integral roles on both sides of Trump’s obsession with the 2020 race. And the saga is far from over: Last week, the FBI searched an election hub in Fulton County seeking records related to the 2020 election. And today, lawyers for Fulton County said they would file a lawsuit in federal court against the FBI and the Justice Department over the search warrant.

Lt. Gov. Burt Jones — who was on the alternate slate of presidential electors who cast votes for Trump at the state Capitol after an official tally confirmed his defeat by Joe Biden — has Trump’s endorsement in the crowded primary for governor.

Also running are two key Republican state officials who refused Trump’s demands to flip the election: Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who rejected Trump’s plea to “find” more votes in Georgia, and state Attorney General Chris Carr, who repeatedly said there was no widespread voter fraud in the state, earning the wrath of Trump. Biden won the 2020 election in Georgia and nationally, and there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Jones, for his part, has continued to highlight that election.

In a recent op-ed in The Federalist, a conservative website, Jones wrote that Americans had been “told to stop asking questions” about the 2020 results, lamenting that “in Georgia, as in much of the country, anyone who raised concerns about the 2020 election was mocked, dismissed, or accused of undermining democracy itself.”

Last week, Jones defended the FBI action in Fulton County and criticized Raffensperger and Carr in a post on X.

“Fulton County Elections couldn’t run a bake sale. And unfortunately, our Secretary of State hasn’t fixed the corruption and our Attorney General hasn’t prosecuted it,” Jones wrote.

Read more →

➡️ Related: Trump says Republicans should ‘nationalize’ elections, by Jane C. Timm

That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner.

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